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Editorial: With Congress set to return some readying stop signs

Congress Recess 82313.jpg

After final votes were cast, members of Congress walk down the steps of the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington Aug. 2 as they leave for a five-week recess. With few accomplishments in the divided 113th Congress, the next big battle is over the budget, the nation's debt limit and the possibility of at least a partial government shutdown.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

There are those who see the expression “do-nothing Congress” as a term of praise.

Some of these folks, of course, are members of the anti-government set, those who have wandered deep into the thicket spread across the most-overgrown libertarian fields.

But others, oddly, have gotten themselves elected to Congress. Imagine Major League Baseball players who didn’t believe in athletic competition. Or doctors who eschewed medicine.

When members of Congress return to our federal city early next month, they will be, to use the typical locution, getting back to work. Except, of course, for those who believe that the best work an elected official can do is to stop things from happening.

Before the start of the August recess, there were a few Republican lawmakers – to use the term loosely – who were talking seriously about pushing to shut down the federal government rather than voting to fund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Thankfully, cooler heads have begun to prevail.

But as folks who are intent on picking a fight will generally continue looking for one until they get what they are after, the shutdown set can be expected to turn its sights toward another struggle. Cue the next battle over increasing the debt ceiling.

While some on the radical right – a much more properly descriptive term than “conservatives” – try to frame the debt-ceiling debate as a fight over spending, it is anything but. It is a simple refusal to pay the bills that Congress rung up earlier.

Expect much misinformation and misdirection – straw men being knocked down all across the landscape – soon after Labor Day.

But what the shouters will be doing, and hoping for, is a whole lot of nothing.